Palais Photo exhibition at Palais des Vaches Art Gallery, Exbury, showcases New Forest-based photographers

AN exhibition showcasing the work of New Forest based photographers is set to open at Exbury’s Palais des Vaches Art Gallery this weekend.

Looking to showcase top local and national talent, venue owner Caroline de Rothschild created a new space and co-curated Palais Photo with photographer Paul Close, highlighting New Forest-based photographers Nick Dawe, Sally Fear, Luke Parkinson, Steve Poole, Bev Saunders and Nick de Rothschild.

The work hangs alongside images by fashion photography icon Sam Haskins and contemporary conceptual artist Michael Meyersfeld.

Paul said: “From the magnificent early 1960s Sam Haskins’ images of ‘Cowboy Kate’ to the inside of the Fawley power station as it was decommissioned, from London on the weekend in 1975 to quirky contemporary township images from Johannesburg and the tranquillity of the landscape and wildlife of The New Forest, Palais Photo brings together the works of nine photographers, spotlighting their distinct individual approaches and creating a fascinating collection of the photographic image.”

Paul started out as a school magazine photographer and progressed into a portrait studio and then press photography in Johannesburg. The images in this exhibition are primarily taken within the New Forest.

The exhibition also features pictures by renowned New Forest commoning photographer Sally Fear, who has published three bestselling books including Crown Keepers of the New Forest, with a foreword by the late Duke of Edinburgh.

For this exhibition Sally decided to show a selection from another community that she photographed in the 1970s, London at the Weekend. Some cities die on Saturdays and Sundays, she wrote, but London lives. She won the first Royal Photographic Society and Nikon Award for this black and white photo essay.

The show also features portraits by fashion photographer Sam Haskins (1926-2009) whose work occupies an influential place in the history of post-war creative photography. An outlier from South Africa whose work played a key role defining feminine identity and photographic thinking of the 1960s, his creative signature was a mastery of figure photography and portraiture often using non-professional models.

Palais Photo will be open on Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd September from 11am to 4pm. Admission to the photography exhibition and gallery is free. For more information visit www.palaisdesvaches.co.uk